How founder of charity started in Cavendish, near Sudbury - who was born 100 years ago - devoted her life to the relief of suffering
Visitors to care homes founded by one of the world’s great humanitarians would sometimes notice a small woman dressed for work in an apron and headscarf and assume she might be a cleaner.
Only later would they realise they had encountered Sue Ryder, the extraordinary driving force behind a charity that reached out across the world to relieve suffering.
Frugal in her lifestyle, oblivious to her own comfort, and buying her clothes from the charity’s shops, her laser-sharp focus was always on achieving her vision to help others.
This year sees the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lady Ryder of Warsaw who set up her first home, to care for survivors of Nazi Germany concentration camps in Poland, in Cavendish, near Sudbury, in 1953 and was made a life peer in 1978.
Her lifelong mission was influenced by her mother’s charity work and forged amid the chaos and agony she saw in the aftermath of World War Two in Europe.
In 1959 she married Group Captain Leonard Cheshire VC, a war hero who was already running his own care homes, and for the rest of their lives they worked tirelessly both separately and together to provide help where it was needed.
Sue Ryder was a powerhouse of energy and iron-clad determination packed into a deceptively tiny frame. Spurred on by an unshakeable vision and the inner combination of indomitable will and deep religious faith she would drive herself to the point of exhaustion and still find the strength to carry on.
She was a hard taskmaster demanding total commitment from those who worked for her, but no-one recalls her asking others to do anything she would not do herself.
Friends and colleagues also remember her piercing blue eyes which once fixed on you left little room for manoeuvre. But beneath all that - and taking many by surprise - lurked an impish sense of humour and a love of practical jokes.
Margaret Susan Ryder - always known as Sue - was born on July 3, 1924 into a wealthy family who owned manor houses in Yorkshire and Thurlow, near Haverhill.
Her father Charles, a landowner and director of Tetley's brewery, was a widower in his 60s with five children when he married Mabel Simms. Sue was the youngest of the five children they had together.
Both her parents took their social responsibilities seriously, striving to support their tenants. Sue would go with her mother to visit impoverished people in the slums of Leeds and the Suffolk countryside.
Her daughter Dr Elizabeth Cheshire believes it sowed the seeds of her future work. “In her formative years she was very close to her own mother who was a great influence,” she says. “Granny was the warmest, most thoughtful person.”
Financial hardships in the 1930s led the family to give up their estate in Yorkshire and move permanently to Suffolk.
When war broke out Sue, who trained as a nurse as soon as she left school in 1939, could not wait to serve her country. She added a year to her age - claiming to be born in 1923 - to join FANY, the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry aged only 16.
“She never went back to her real age,” said Elizabeth. “But this is the year she would really have been 100. She was a very strong character. If she hadn’t been she wouldn't have achieved what she did.”
The FANY girls worked hard learning first aid and stretcher skills, map reading, night driving and how to maintain vehicles from cars to seven-ton lorries.
She was then seconded to the Special Operations Executive (SOE) - a secret organisation that carried out spying, sabotage and reconnaissance, and aided local resistance in German-occupied Europe.
While working at Audley End House in Essex for the section that trained and equipped Polish officers her lifelong involvement with Poland began. Her love for the country eventually became so deep she referred to it as home.
In 1943 she was posted overseas with FANY. Winter in Italy saw them battling ferocious winds, blinding blizzards, and such bitter cold the water turned to ice in their hot water bottles and they had to start vehicle engines every 20 minutes at night to stop the diesel freezing.
The war years brought personal tragedy for Sue Ryder including the deaths of her father and the best friend with whom she had trained for the SOE.
She also married for the first time during the war, but her husband was killed in action soon afterwards, and later she never spoke of it. Even her children never learned his identity.
Towards the end of hostilities she first encountered starving, skeletal survivors of Nazi concentration camps - the kind of people who would find sanctuary in her first care home.
After the war she did relief work in Europe witnessing terrible suffering. The plight of ex-concentration camp prisoners who had committed crimes out of desperate need, or for revenge on their enemies, hit her especially hard.
She began visiting them in prison, arguing for their release or less harsh sentences, and her visits continued for decades afterwards. She also broke the rules by assisting the escape of Russian ex-POWs terrified of being sent back to their communist home country,
Sue Ryder returned to England with a mission - a living memorial to those who had suffered and died, and she set up the Forgotten Allies Friendship Trust initially organising holiday breaks for victims.
Her mother Mabel had moved to the Old Rectory in Cavendish after being widowed, and in the early 1950s the two agreed that the house should become a home to care for survivors of Nazi Germany concentration camps in Poland.
It was the start of the charity that grew into the Sue Ryder Foundation with homes across the UK, Poland, and many other countries, providing services tailored in each case to what was needed.
The Cavendish home developed and changed its caring role as time went on. It remained the charity’s headquarters and her home, where the family lived in a tiny flat, for almost 50 years.
In 1956 she was surprised by Eamonn Andrews with his ‘red book’ to feature on the BBC’s This is Your Life - much to her astonishment as she didn’t have a television and had never heard of the show. In 1957, with recognition of her work growing, she was awarded an OBE.
She met her husband, Leonard - later Baron Cheshire - when she visited one of his care homes. They began working together with the Ryder-Cheshire Mission, and married in 1959.
For decades she made solo trips to Poland with supplies, heading across Europe in all conditions at the wheel of a heavily laden van she nicknamed Joshua … and making sure she always took the basics of food she called her nosebag - Ryvita, crisps, cheese, bananas and chocolate.
She and Leonard had two children, Elizabeth who is now an A&E consultant, and Jeromy, who worked at Cavendish as a nurse, and who died in 2019..
Elizabeth recalls: “We grew up surrounded by people who had been in concentration camps. People came from all over the world to look after them, and ladies from the village came in to do the cooking.
“It was a very mixed household in a very good way - a happy community that really worked. Tradesmen would come and spend their leave here, or go to Poland and work there.
“Mum built a museum to educate people who were interested in how the foundation came about. The Queen Mother came and opened it.”
Lord Cheshire died in 1992. Elizabeth, by then a lawyer, changed careers after going with him to the Ryder-Cheshire home in India when he was suffering from motor neurone disease. “I found myself wishing I’d done medicine,” she says.
The work of Sue Ryder’s charity expanded through the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s. Homes had different functions, including caring for children, older people, and those at the end of life. Separate foundations were established in numerous countries, and she also set up the Sue Ryder Prayer Fellowship in 1984.
In the late 1990s disagreement with the foundation trustees over the direction of the charity caused her great sadness and led to her splitting from the organisation. Despite being frail and ill, she set up the Bouverie Foundation to continue her work. She died, aged 76, in 2000.
After her death, the Bouverie Foundation was renamed the Lady Ryder of Warsaw Memorial Trust. Funded by legacies and donations, it still works to uphold her legacy providing funds for projects and sponsoring medical students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Honouring the memory of suffering and sacrifice was always important to Lady Ryder and the ‘rosemary for remembrance’ emblem she chose for her charity has been adopted by the trust.
It marked her centenary with events including a celebration for ex-employees and volunteers at her former Cavendish base which is now Devonshire House care home..
Among them was 101 year-old Rene Rowe, who spent more than 30 years volunteering in the Cavendish Sue Ryder shop, and was in her late 90s when she retired.
“I was working in the shop, and hadn’t met her. This lady with a scarf around her head, and an apron, asked me if I would do some cleaning - I thought she was one of the cleaners. Later someone told me who she was.
“When my husband Don became really ill he came into the care home here. Jeromy, Sue Ryder’s son, was a very very good nurse and very kind to him,” said Rene, who went to a Buckingham Palace garden party in recognition of her volunteer work.
Phyllis Felton, a local historian from Sudbury, gives talks on Lady Ryder. “It keeps her name alive,” says Phyllis who with Jeromy created a remembrance room at Devonshire House.
Sue Doe, from Ipswich, says: “I answered an ad for a girl Friday in 1988. My role gradually developed, and I became one of her personal assistants towards the end. What impressed me about her was she wouldn’t ask anyone to do anything she wouldn’t do herself.
“She got up at 5am, and had what she called her hour with God. Then she came down and always made phone calls before 8am because it was cheaper.
“If I came to see her she would always say ‘would you like a cup of tea?’. She was considerate to others.
“I helped her open the Chantry Park home in Ipswich and I got involved with putting a blue plaque on her birthplace in Yorkshire.”
Margaret and John Kurtz from Cavendish met at the village’s Sue Ryder Home where she was a nurse and he was a volunteer. They married in 1968 after he proposed to her beside the lake in the grounds. Sue Ryder was at their wedding.
Margaret had arrived in 1960. “I looked after 37 patients. One lady had been thrown off a train by the Nazis - both her arms were cut off by the train and she was left for dead. Another had been beaten over the head. We had no aids so we had to lift everybody, but a lot of people were skeletal and didn’t weigh much.”
John was working as a plant mechanic when he began volunteering for the charity. He helped to renovate a derelict wing of Melford Hall to provide holiday accommodation for people from Poland and also worked in the Cavendish home, recalling: "I did a lot of washing up.”
Trinda Baxter, from Glemsford, worked for Sue Ryder for 31 years.
”I came as a shorthand typist. It was a bit different from my other jobs.
“It took a while to get to know her but in the end we got on really well. I became one of her secretaries. There was a lot to learn.”
Ruth Young does admin for the Memorial Trust and joined the Sue Ryder Foundation in 1987. “I started as a volunteer for six months. When I was thinking about leaving she asked me to stay on and work for her.
“My job was generally helping in the office and reception, and looking after her diary. She used to plan a lot of overseas trips and I had to keep her updated when she was away.
“She was a very determined person and had an incredible amount of energy. She always felt there was more to be done, more needs to be met.
“She wasn't so keen on paperwork, and would much rather be visiting and looking after the sick, or indeed packing supplies for Poland or sorting clothing for the Sue Ryder shops. Whenever she went to London for meetings at the House of Lords the car would go loaded with items for the shops.
“She could be quite demanding, but I feel that she never asked you to do something which she would not be prepared to do herself. She was kind and thoughtful to me personally..
“I think it is the work which she did immediately after the war and through the 1950s and 1960s, which marks her out as quite unique.”
Michael Cutting, a Memorial Trust trustee, said: “Having known Sue Ryder since 1960 when we moved to Cavendish, I saw and heard of her tireless efforts to improve the lives of the sick ,disabled and impoverished worldwide, and was only too pleased to become a trustee when I retired to help support the work she started and maintain her legacy.”
The Revd Canon Robert Clifton, a long time friend of Lady Ryder, has said: “It was quite tiring for people to keep up with her. But she was different when speaking to someone weaker … very warm.”
He also knew her lighter side. “She wasn’t in any way fashion conscious but she could also look dazzling at times like when she was presented with an award by Princess Margaret. She claimed she bought the frock off a barrow boy in the East End.”
And he recalled she once turned up at one of her homes dressed as a tramp with her teeth blacked out and demanded a bed for the night.
In 2009, at the dedication of a plaque to Lady Ryder and Lord Cheshire in Cavendish church, he said her work among the ruins of Europe rescuing, befriending and battling with authorities on behalf of those who were friendless and had nothing made her one of the legends of the 20th century.
A book, Sue Ryder: A Life Lived for Others, by Joanna Bogle has been published to mark her centenary. Details are on the memorial trust website lrwmt.org.uk
